Criminal justice statistics user guide

4. Definitions

Individual offenders may be proceeded against on more than one occasion, and they may be proceeded against for more than one charge within the same proceeding. The units of measurement used in the criminal proceedings and reconvictions bulletins, which may be different to those in other criminal justice statistics publications, are outlined below.

4.1 The person or company proceeded against or convicted

A person proceeded against can be defined as someone with a charge proved, those acquitted not guilty, those acquitted not proven, those where a not guilty plea was accepted and those deserted simpliciter. Where a case was deserted “pro loco et tempore”, or “not called”, they are not included here.

Also excluded are people against whom proceedings are raised but which are dropped before they reach court. This will therefore exclude those who appear on petition but are not subsequently indicted.

People are counted once for each occasion they are proceeded against. If a person is proceeded against more than once on the same day, each proceeding will be counted separately. References to ‘people’ include companies.

Where a person is proceeded against for more than one crime or offence in a single proceeding, only the main charge is counted.

A person convicted is defined to be one who had a plea of ‘guilty’ accepted, or who was proved guilty of at least one charge within a proceeding as a result of a trial. Throughout our bulletins, the terms ‘people convicted’ and ‘convictions’ are used interchangeably. If the case does not reach the courts then the main charge within the case that reaches the furthest stage in the criminal justice system is counted e.g. if the case is disposed of via a non-court disposal by the police or COPFS.

4.2 Main charge

The main charge is the one receiving the most severe penalty (or disposal) if one or more charges are proved, and is identified using a look-up table which ranks the disposal types in order of severity. For example, custody is ranked higher than a monetary fine, so for a proceeding where there was a mixture of these two types of disposal, the main charge counted for this record would be the charge associated with the custody disposal rather than the charge related to the monetary disposal.

If two charges have the same disposal, then the charge with the lowest numbered crime code is taken as the main crime. Generally, the lower the crime code, the more serious the crime would be. The lowest crime code is for murder and the highest for road traffic offences.

4.3 Individual person

In the period covered by a bulletin, each person convicted of a crime or offence will have been assigned a unique reference number by Police Scotland. This enables all convictions relating to an individual person to be linked together, so that analysis of the number of convictions per person in any given year, and the number of their previous convictions and reconvictions can be derived.

4.4 Individual offences

In addition to analysing people convicted by the main charge involved, data in relation to individual charges (offences) which are proved are also available. These can be seen in Tables 4a and 4b, which show aggregate figures for charges (offences) by crime type alongside those based on the main charge.

Generally, only the initial outcome is included in the court proceedings statistics so that, for example, a person fined is regarded as fined even if he or she subsequently goes to prison in default of payment. Similarly, no account is taken of the outcome of appeals; the exception to this is for those crimes where an appeal is determined prior to publication and the conviction is quashed or the sentence is substituted.

A court can impose more than one penalty in appropriate cases. For example, a fine can be imposed in addition to a more severe penalty, such as custody, although the statistics are only based on whichever penalty is deemed to be the main charge. The main additional punishments are generally disqualification from holding or obtaining a driving licence and the endorsement of a driving licence. Please note that although statistics on driving licence disqualifications are not published in this output, they are available on request.

4.5 Reference year

In the court proceedings statistics, the reference year used is the year in which the person is sentenced. For example, if a person pleads to, or is convicted for, a charge in 2018 to 2019, but is not sentenced until 2019 to 2020, all events are recorded as occurring in 2019 to 2020. All data is reported for financial rather than calendar year.

4.6 Age and sex

The age of each person is calculated as at the date of sentence or acquittal. This may be older than a person’s age when any offending took place. The sex of a person in the criminal proceedings database is the same as is recorded in the criminal history system. In some years, sex information is missing from the database for a few individuals. In these instances, these people are excluded from tables that include breakdowns by sex (they are included in tables without sex breakdowns).

4.7 Custodial sentences

In 2022 to 2023 the custodial sentence measures available to courts, that we have statistics for, included the options to:

• Imprison the convicted person (if aged 21 or over); sentence to a Young Offenders’ Institution (YOI) (if aged 18 to 21).
• Issue an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR). The OLR provides for the lifelong supervision of high-risk violent and sexual offenders and allows for a greater degree of intensive supervision than is the current norm. The OLR is designed to ensure that offenders, after having served an adequate period in prison to meet the requirements of punishment, do not present an unacceptable risk to public safety once they are released into the community. The period spent in the community will be an integral part of the sentence, which lasts for the remaining period of the offender's life.
• Impose an Extended Sentence. These sentences give additional post-release supervision on licence where it is considered that any existing supervision after the offender’s release from custody would be a risk to the public. Extended sentences are imposed on sex offenders or on violent offenders who receive a custodial sentence of four years or more. The criminal history system only includes the length of the custodial part of the sentence and not the post-release supervision.
• Impose a Supervised Release Order. These can be used for people sentenced to less than 4 years in custody for offences other than sexual crimes. They mean that the person is compulsorily supervised by a criminal justice social worker for up to one year following release. These orders should only be imposed where the Court believes it would help prevent serious harm. The offender must comply with the reasonable instructions of the supervising officer. The criminal history system only includes the length of the custodial part of the sentence and not the post-release supervision.
• Sentence a person under the age of 18 convicted of murder to be detained without limit of time in such place, and under such conditions, as Scottish Ministers may direct. Where the person is aged 18 or over but under 21, he or she should be detained initially in a young offenders institution.
• Where a child (as defined in Section 199 of the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011) is convicted on indictment and the court is of the view that no other method of dealing with the child is appropriate, the court may sentence the child to be detained for a period specified in the sentence and shall during that period be liable to be detained in such place, and on such conditions, as Scottish Ministers may direct.

4.8 Custodial sentence length

The custodial sentence length for the person is the total sentence given for all charges in a proceeding.

In some cases, although the publication focuses on the main charge, one sentence can be given for all charges, or multiple charges can be served consecutively or concurrently. For example, a single “in cumulo” prison sentence can be given for multiple offences that arose from the same incident; an 18-month sentence could consist of 12 months given for the main charge, and six months for a separate charge.

Figures for sentence lengths imposed include any element imposed for bail aggravation under Section 27(1)(b) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, and under Section 16 of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 (where the offender committed an offence following release from custody on licence prior to the end of a previous sentence period imposed).

4.9 Community sentences

Community sentence is a collective term for the ways that courts can punish someone convicted of committing an offence other than by serving a custodial sentence. The following list includes the community sentence options which can be imposed.

• Community payback order (CPO). These were introduced by the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 and can only be imposed in respect of offence(s) committed on or after 1 February 2011. The CPO replaced provisions for community service orders, probation orders, supervised attendance orders, and the community reparation order.
• A CPO can consist of one or more of 10 requirements including offender supervision, compensation, unpaid work or other activity, mental health treatment, drug treatment and alcohol treatment, restricted movement requirement. Every order must contain either an unpaid work or other activity requirement, or an offender supervision requirement (or both). If an offender fails to comply with a requirement in the order, the court can impose a number of sanctions, including a restricted movement requirement. The restricted movement requirement at first disposal came into force in May 2022. Restricted movement requirement could previously be imposed following breach only.
• Restriction of liberty order: a community sentence introduced by section 5 of the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Act 1997 and available to courts nationally from 1 May 2002. This requires a person to remain within a location, usually their home, at times specified by the court. A person's compliance with the order is monitored electronically.
• Drug treatment and testing order (DTTO): a measure introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and rolled out in phases from 1999 onwards. These are designed to reduce or stop offending by addressing problem drug use through the provision or access to a closely monitored treatment programme.

And, for offences committed prior to 1 February 2011:

• Probation order, of which some had conditions such as unpaid work or alcohol treatment attached.
• Community service order requiring the offender to undertake unpaid work.
• Supervised attendance order which the court can impose as an alternative to custody for people who have defaulted on fines imposed for minor criminal offences.

4.10 Financial penalties

The list below includes the financial penalty sentence options that allow the courts to:

• Fine the offender
• Impose a compensation order requiring the offender to compensate the victim for any resulting injury, loss, damage, alarm or distress.

4.11 Other sentences

The list below includes the “other” sentence options that allow the courts to:

• Admonish the offender or make an order to find caution (the overwhelming majority of these are admonishments).
• Order an absolute discharge (with no conviction recorded in summary procedure) or, following a deferral of sentence, make no order.
• Remit a child offender to a children's hearing (if the accused is a child, under 16 years of age or aged 16 or 17 and subject to a supervision requirement).
• Make a guardianship order if the accused is suffering from a mental disorder (with no conviction recorded in summary procedure).
• Make a compulsion order if the accused is suffering from a mental disorder (with a conviction recorded), for a period of six months with regular reviews.

The range of options available to the police for minor offences (Police non-court disposals) includes:

• Recorded Police Warnings, which were introduced on 11 January 2016 to deal with low-level offences and replaced Formal Adult Warnings. They can be issued to any person over the age of 16. It is not a finding of guilt but is an alternative to prosecution and can be taken into account within a period of two years should the offender come to the further notice of the police.
• Anti-social behaviour fixed penalty notices (ASBFPNs) of £50, which can be issued for eleven crime/offence types, including drunken-related behaviours and playing loud music, to people aged 16 or over. Payment of the penalty involves no admission of guilt.
• Disposals for young people who offend such as Early and Effective Interventions (EEI) and Restorative Justice Warnings.

When a report is submitted by the police to COPFS, prosecution in court is only one of a range of possible options for dealing with people who have been charged. COPFS can decide to use one of these non-court direct measures (COPFS non-court disposal):

• Fiscal fines of between £50 to £500 for summary offences
• Fiscal fixed penalties, generally issued for motor vehicle offences.
• Fiscal warnings provide a method of dealing with a case without recourse to prosecution – they mean that the person receiving that warning cannot be prosecuted for that offence.
• Fiscal compensation orders of up to £5,000 payable to the victim for personal injury, loss, damage, alarm or distress.
• Combined fiscal fine and fiscal compensation order.
• Fiscal Work Orders (FWOs) were introduced across Scotland in April 2015 and provide COPFS with the option of offering an alleged offender a period of unpaid work of between 10 and 50 hours, as an alternative to prosecution. Successful completion of the order discharges the right to prosecute. Work is ongoing with COPFS and Police Scotland to ensure that these disposals are recorded correctly, and we intend to publish FWO statistics when we are satisfied that they are accurate.

4.12 Aggravations

Aggravations can be recorded by Police Scotland or COPFS to provide additional information relating to the nature of a charge. For example, someone who commits an assault which is motivated by malice towards the victim as a result of their religion might have their offence recorded under “common assault” with an aggravation code of “religious” hatred.

The set of aggravation codes that are used on the CHS include statutory aggravations which are those introduced through legislation. Examples of statutory aggravations are:

• Sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability as introduced through the Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Act 2009;
• Racially motivated crime as legislated for under Section 96 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998;
• Religiously motivated crime as legislation for under Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003;
• Bail and undertaking aggravations as introduced in Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, sections 22 and 27.
• Domestic abuse aggravations, as introduced via the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016.
• Domestic abuse aggravation in relation to a child under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.
• Age and variations in sex characteristic as introduced in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

 

The CHS also includes some aggravation codes that are not statutory, but are used as identifiers to highlight cases to the police, COPFS or SCTS. This includes an identifier for domestic abuse, which identifies domestic abuse related charges for operational purposes, whether the statutory domestic abuse aggravation applies to them.

Statistics on offences with a bail aggravation recorded, which identify offences that were committed while the offender was on bail, are published under the “supporting documents” menu on the criminal proceedings website.

4.13 Bail Orders

Bail orders are issued at various times during the legal process. They are generally granted at an early point, often before there is a petition/complaint. Furthermore, it’s possible that an individual can receive multiple bail orders in the same case – this may be because conditions have been breached/appealed/reviewed, and a new order is subsequently issued. The combination of these events means that there is no expectation of a direct correlation between the numbers of bail orders issued and the numbers of proceedings, although at a basic level, an increase in activity in the justice system will generally correlate with an increase in the numbers of both bail orders and proceedings

4.14 Bail undertakings

Bail undertakings are used when a person has been charged with a crime, but where the accused is trusted to maintain good behaviour until their court appearance and therefore is not required to be held in custody. The accused agrees that they will attend court at a specific time and may also be held to certain conditions. An undertaking will not be granted if a person was arrested on a warrant.4.15 Non-court disposals

Non-court disposals are alternatives to formal charges in the criminal justice system. They are designed to allow police and other authorities to deal with minor offences quickly and proportionately, without the need for court proceedings.  

The criminal proceedings and reconvictions data includes information on some but not all possible non-court disposals issued by the police and COPFS, including:

• Anti-social behaviour fixed penalty notices
• Restorative Justice Warnings
• Early and Effective Interventions
• Recorded Police Warnings
• Fiscal Fines
• Fiscal Fixed Penalties
• Fiscal Combined Fine with Compensation
• Fiscal Compensation
• Fiscal Warnings
• Some historical penalties (such as Formal Adult Warnings)

4.16 Reconvictions definitions

Statistics on convictions and reconvictions do not measure offending and reoffending, or recidivism. Not all offences which are committed are reported to the police, while some of those that are reported and recorded do not result in an offender being identified, charged and eventually being tried in court. For cases which are reported to the Procurator Fiscal, it may be decided to take no proceedings, or to employ some alternative to prosecution such as a warning letter or a fiscal fine. In addition, where persons are prosecuted, the proceedings may end up being dropped. This could be for various reasons, such as witnesses failing to turn up. Convictions and reconvictions are therefore a subset of actual offending and reoffending, and reconviction rates are only a proxy measure of reoffending rates.

Generally, only the initial court sentence is included in the statistics on convictions, so that, for example, a person fined is regarded as fined, even if he or she is subsequently given a custodial sentence in default of payment. Similarly, the offenders released from custody who are included in the analysis in the reconvictions statistics will only include those directly sentenced to custody, i.e. persons released after imprisonment for fine default are excluded. Also, no account is taken of the outcome of appeals, or of interim decisions such as deferral of sentence.

4.17 Average number of reconvictions per offender

In a cohort, the total number of reconvictions from a court recorded within a specified follow up period from the date of index convictions, divided by the total number of offenders in the cohort with index convictions from a court. Unless otherwise stated, the average number of reconvictions per offender quoted in the bulletin are for a follow-up period of one year. It should be noted that because this measure is an average, there may be variation in the number of reconvictions of offenders within the group the measure is applied to. For example, the group may include some offenders who have no reconvictions and some offenders with multiple reconvictions. This measures the frequency of reconviction in a cohort.

Average number of repeat non-court disposals per individual - the total number of non-court disposals received by a cohort within a year of the index non-court disposal, divided by the total number of individuals in the cohort with an index non court disposal. This measures the frequency of the cohort receiving non-court disposals.

4.18 Cohort

All offenders who either received a non-custodial conviction or were released from a custodial sentence in a given financial year, from the 1st April to the 31st March the following year. In the analyses for non-court disposals, a cohort is all the individuals who either received a police or COPFS disposal in a given financial year. In the reconvictions bulletin, for ease of communication, the cohort may be referred to by year alone, for example 2021 to 2022. The cohort year for reconvictions is usually the year before the most recent criminal proceedings reference year.

4.19 Index conviction

The reference conviction used for calculating reconvictions.

In order to produce meaningful analysis on reconvictions, a decision is made as to which of an individual's convictions in a series is to be taken as a reference point, known as the index conviction. In our statistics, the rule for choosing the index conviction is:

(a) the first date when an individual was estimated to have been released from prison from a custodial sentence, or

(b) the first occasion in the financial year in question when an individual was given a non-custodial sentence.

Whichever conviction has the earlier of these dates in a given financial year is the index conviction. The crime and sentence linked to this index conviction are referred to as the index crime and index disposal, respectively. In the case of the reconviction rate, the analysis then considers the proportion of these individuals who are reconvicted in court within one year (or two years in Table 14) from the date of sentence or the estimated custody release date, i.e. from the relevant date of the index conviction, whereas the average number of reconvictions per offender considers the number of times offenders are reconvicted in the follow-up period from the index conviction.

Convictions for a crime against public justice, such as committing an offence while on bail, are not considered as index convictions. If the first conviction in the year for a particular offender was for such an offence, their next conviction which wasn’t a crime against public justice was taken instead. Where an individual had no further convictions in the year for crimes other than crimes against public justice they are not included in the data set.

For the purposes of the analysis in the reconvictions bulletin, the date of release for offenders given a custodial sentence has been estimated. This is estimated from their sentence date, the length of sentence imposed, assumptions about time spent on remand and release on parole, and information about whether the offender had been granted bail. The release date estimated by this approach will not always tie in with the actual release date because, for example, the offender may be serving other custodial sentences. However, this is not judged to be significant for the purposes of the current analysis. The main exception to this relates to offenders discharged from life sentences or, for some cohorts, very long determinate custodial sentences.

4.20 Age

The age of each person relates to their age at the time that the index sentence was passed. This also applies to offenders discharged from a custodial sentence, i.e. their age at the date of sentence is taken rather than at the estimated release date.

4.21 Release date

It is not possible to accurately identify the release date for offenders serving life sentences or, in some instances, very lengthy determinate sentences. However, the number of offenders involved is relatively small (for example, 41 offenders received a life sentence in 2019 to 2020) and so will not affect the analysis presented in the reconvictions bulletin significantly.

4.22 Index non-court disposal

An index non-court disposal is the reference police or COPFS disposal imposed (e.g. a fine), which is the first non-court disposal given to an individual in a given financial year.

In the reconvictions bulletin, convictions that happen before the index convictions are referred to as ‘previous convictions’.

4.23 Reconviction rate

The percentage of offenders in the cohort with index convictions given by a court who were reconvicted one or more times by a court within a specified follow up period from the relevant date of the index conviction. Unless otherwise stated, the reconviction rates in our statistics are for a follow-up period of one year. The reconviction rate is always a value between 0 (none of the cohort were reconvicted) and 1 (all of the cohort were reconvicted.)

4.24 Repeat non-court disposal rate

The percentage of individuals who are given a further non-court disposal within a year of receiving a non-court disposal from the police or COPFS.

4.25 Pseudo-reconviction

Pseudo-reconvictions are convictions which occur after the index conviction, but which relate to offences that are committed prior to the index conviction occurring.

For example, someone could be released from custody and then later that same year they might be prosecuted for an offence they committed before they went to prison, but which had taken a long time to reach court. If convicted, this would be a pseudo-reconviction. Pseudo-reconvictions may be more likely when prosecutions take longer to come to court. As there is significant variation in the length of time to prosecution amongst crime types, it may be that the reconviction statistics for some crimes are more likely to include pseudo-reconvictions than others.

The reconvictions data includes pseudo-reconvictions although a table is published in the additional data spreadsheet which shows reconvictions without pseudo-reconvictions.

4.26 Court location

The reconvictions tables include reconvictions based on location of court. The areas that courts serve do not exactly match administrative areas for local authorities. For example, Edinburgh Sheriff Court serves the local authority areas of the City of Edinburgh, Midlothian, and East Lothian. As a result, local authorities are based on approximate areas. Some local authorities are grouped together so that there are 24 grouped local authorities presented, rather than all 32 being displayed separately. The notes in the data tables include details of the approximations for each administrative area. Convictions in the High Court are also presented separately. Note that offenders may be tried in a court that covers a different local authority to where they live if they commit a crime in a different area.